[Ag-eq] Aquaponics

[Fred's Win7 Catastrophe]

Hey, thinks for remembering!

Aquatic animals like to eat.  Catfish, trouts, salmons, basses etc 
are difficult to reproduce and expensive to feed.  Keep it cheaper by 
growing fish that eat lower on the food chain.  if you want to grow 
fish and plants together indoors, you'll want a lot of light.  If 
you've got a room with south and west facing windows in the Northern 
Hemisphere, or north and west facing windows in the Southern 
Hemisphere, you should use as much of the free sunlight as you 
can.  You will probably have to heat your water in the cool/cold 
months.  The light is important not just for its heat, but it keeps 
the algae healthy.  The photosynthesis of the algae makes Oxygen for 
the fish.

What works well is a polyculture of fish species that are temperature 
tolerant and work well together.  Instead of goldfish, which aren't 
valuable as food, we grew Common Carp.  They are more like koi, and 
can survive very cold water.  Northern Europeans call them "Christmas 
carp," because that's what they traditionally eat around the December 
holidays.  Carps are good at stirring up the sand and gravel from the 
bottoms of tanks and ponds as they search for algae and 
bacteria.  That sifting of the sediments keeps nutrients up in the 
water column.

Tilapia like Oreochromus mozambicus are from southern Africa, so 
are  known for being more temperature tolerant than the tropical 
Tilapias.  They are fun because they use their gills like rakes, and 
screen algae out of the water column.  Tilapia usually cannot 
overwinter, without heating the water.

Mostly vegetarians, both carps and tilapias will eat algae and 
bacteria clumps off the roots of floating plants.  They also nip off 
some of the roots, but the plants don't seem to care.  They are happy 
to eat old breads, flours and grains with weevils, pretzels, etc.,

A good plant that can be found in many Asian food markets is Chinese 
water spinach.  It'll grow  on top of your tanks or ponds.  It can 
grow very fast under ideal conditions, and you can eat it raw or 
cooked, like other spinaches.  It is a little sweeter than most 
terrestrial spinaches.

Check with local experts to find out which  plants and animals are 
legal in your area.

Here's a link to more water spinach info, below.

Fred

http://aquaponicsglobal.com/category/water-spinach/


At 10:46 AM 8/21/2014, you wrote:
>I heard an interesting piece on aquaponics.  I think it was on World 
>Gardening Radio, out of the UK, but it was talking about the US.
>People are taking empty factories and converting them to aquaponics. 
>There's a place in St. Paul that was an old brewery.  They take food 
>waste from local restaurants and use it to generate energy.  They 
>didn't go into that; I think it's a methane reaction.  Then they use 
>the energy to run grow-lights.  They have big tanks with tilapia 
>fish in the water and herbs and greens on top.  The fish waste 
>fertilizes the plants, and the plants filter the water.  I've read 
>that tilapia do very well in this kind of setup.  Then, they sell 
>the fish and the greens to local restaurants.  A very neat loop.
>The program said one could have the same kind of setup on a small 
>scale with a goldfish or two, though we don't usually eat goldfish.
>Our list member Fred does something with aquaponics.  I'd be real 
>interested to hear about it--the scale of it, and such.
>I'd like to try it myself, though my husband has a real thing about 
>fish; he says they just die.
>Tracy
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ag-eq mailing list
>Ag-eq at nfbnet.org
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/ag-eq_nfbnet.org
>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Ag-eq:
>http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/ag-eq_nfbnet.org/regenerative%40earthlink.net